inbound
Duck Commander makes
the right “call” on lift
truck buy
To keep training fresh, change it up
The camo-clad, heavily bearded gang at
Duck Commander, the family-owned
duck- and deer-call business featured in
A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” reality series,
knows a thing or two about hunting ducks
and deer. They also seem to know how to
hunt up material handling equipment.
Thanks to the wildly popular TV show,
the Robertson family’s West Monroe, La.,
business has taken off, and the duckmen
now sell hunting gear, T-shirts, books,
DVDs, and the like along with their duck
call line. To accommodate that expan-
sion, they needed to
make their small
warehouse more
productive. So the
Robertsons called
on New Orleans-
based Deep South
Equipment for help.
The material han-
dling equipment
distributor installed new racking in the
warehouse and recommended Hyster’s
electric J35XN lift truck because of its
tight turning radius, low cost of opera-
tion, and durability.
It was the right “call,” you might say.
“At Duck Commander, we love our
Hyster forklift that we got from Deep
South Equipment,” said CEO Willie
Robertson. “When running my family
business here at Duck Commander, I
don’t always get a choice of employees
because it’s family. However, I do get to
choose the equipment we have, and the
Hyster forklift is efficient and easy to
drive. This ease gives my guys maximum
productivity, and that is what I am looking for. It’s so versatile and easy to run
that even Jase and Godwin can run the
thing,” he said, referring to his easily distracted younger brother and shipping
department supervisor John Godwin
(standing on forks in the photo). ;
In well-run warehouses and DCs, employee training is high on
the priority list. But simply standing in front of warehouse associates and lecturing them isn’t very effective. If you want workers to apply what they’ve learned when they head back out onto
the floor, you’ll need to make the material both interesting and
memorable.
Varying the presentation method is one way to keep employees
engaged, says Dixie L. Brock, manager, Americas safety and claims
for APL Logistics (APLL), which manages more than three-dozen
warehouses and DCs in North America. Brock has used everything from PowerPoint slides and webinars to on-site lectures and
demonstrations, training films, and self-study modules.
Another way to keep workers engaged is to make the training
interactive, so that students must do more than just listen. Brock
says a multimedia safety training program developed for APLL by
its insurance carrier has proved to be especially effective. The program requires trainees to interact with the program and the
instructor not only at frequent intervals but also in different ways.
For example, at different points, they must answer questions,
engage in discussions, and use electronic polling devices to respond
to questions and compare their responses with coworkers’. ;
McDonald’s app helps Aussies track
their Macs
PHOTO COURTESY OF HYSTER
Consumers have long been able to peek into the “deliver” stage of
a business’s supply chain by checking product availability online
and tracking the status of their orders. From January to June of
this year, the Australian branch of the fast-food chain McDonald’s
allowed its customers to gain a far deeper look into its supply
chain, all the way back to the “source” and “make” segments.
During that time, the company’s “Track My Macca’s” iPhone
application let locals (who refer to the chain as “Macca’s”) scan
codes on specially marked boxes of popular menu items to find
out where the ingredients came from. The app uses the geographic positioning system in iPhones to identify which restaurant a
patron is in and image recognition to see what product the user is
eating, plus the date and time, to determine the source of the
ingredients.
The app allowed users to click on symbols for individual
ingredients, including meat, chicken, fish, buns, cheese, lettuce,
and pickles, to view photos and brief bios of the farmers, fisher-men, and bakers who supplied the restaurant. Examples:
Graeme Acton, who farms beef cattle on nearly 4 million acres,
and Oluksiy Makhmutor, who has been fishing since he was 13
years old. ;
